Can Israel’s war on Gaza trigger a ‘Palestinian Spring’ in the Arab world?
Posted on: April 19, 2024
Regional protests recall the 2011 uprisings, as Palestine becomes a rallying cry against Israel’s injustice and Arab leaders’ inaction, writes Sania Mahyou.
Sania Mahyou
10 Apr, 2024
Despite being 4000 kilometres away, the Moroccan city of Tangier on the shores of the Atlantic ocean and Amman, Jordan’s bustling capital, recently shared the spotlight under a single headline in the midst of Israel’s aggression on Gaza.
On the first day of April, a video showing Moroccan protestors expressing solidarity with pro-Palestinian activists in Jordan went viral on social media, after the procession started chanting, “Tangier the brave salutes Jordan the chivalrous” while marching through the streets.
A few days earlier in Cairo, activists had also gathered to show solidarity with their Jordanian neighbours, who had been demonstrating in their masses outside the Israeli embassy every evening since the 23rd of March.
Answering their call to take to the streets, the small gathering echoed the chant, “Tell our comrades in Amman, Egypt is also awake”.
“The Palestinian Spring could emerge from the ashes of the movement of 2011”
The two videos, which may seem innocuous to an uninformed viewer, remind us of the scenes of the uprisings during the Arab Spring, which erupted in Tunisia in late 2010.
As they did over a decade ago, these protests could also serve as a catalyst in the region, as evidenced by the swift filling of the comments sections with messages calling for an ‘Arab Spring 2024’.
Over 13 years after the self-immolation of 26-year-old fish vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose death ignited calls for social justice, economic opportunities, and the ousting of authoritarian leaders, the region is once again mobilising to defy oppression around a common cause: Palestine.
And while many former participants in the revolutions became disillusioned seeing the poor improvements in the economic, political and democratic fields of their country, the Palestinian Spring could emerge from the ashes of the movement of 2011.
Although some scholars argue that the Arab Spring ended in 2014 with the start of the “counter revolutions” that succeeded to effectively crush the protests either by granting small concessions to the participants or by completely annihilating the resistance, others always insisted that the movement had never died and had only been put on hold until it could rise again.
In most of the countries that were touched by the revolutionary contagion back in 2011, the uprisings constituted a pan-Arab turning point.
Even though each mobilization was set in a specific national context, the demands gravitated overall around a common struggle, the one of freedom and dignity, regardless of whether the protesters were in Libya, Bahrain, Tunisia, or Syria.
Similarly, the Palestinian cause has long acted as a strong bond between Arabs, a transnational cause that transcends the divides and differences between cultures, languages, and religions of the people of the region.
Over decades, the injustices inflicted on Palestinians by Israel have turned into what feels like personal injustices for Arabs.
Witnessing the Palestinians endure indiscriminate killings, apartheid, displacements, land dispossessions, and discrimination inflicted by Israel, Arabs have consistently empathised with these profound humiliations, feeling as if they themselves were directly affected.
It is thus no wonder that Israel’s horrendous aggression on Gaza that started on 7th October seventh and has already killed more than 33,000 Palestinians in the Strip, sparked immense anger among Arab populations.
Note: My immediate worry is starting a civil war in this created monarchic Jordan. Where do you think the displaced and refugees would be able to flee to? Saudi Kingdom and Syria will Not welcome the displaced. Will the colonial powers establish more new and vast refugee camps on the borders?
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